up, a little. When I sang out a name, a man or woman would clap if I got it right, and the others would call it out, once. When I got a name wrong or didn’t know it, the person would clap twice and dance a little with me and sing out his or her name and village. Everybody took to this activity, and on other occasions when we were made to dance, homelanders took turns calling out the names and villages of the people around them. Some of the others were able to count out as many as fifteen names and villages, but after several days I could call out the names of almost every person I saw.
Biton made us sing the naming game and dance so lustily that the toubabu would come closer to admire us. The toubabu assembled in their natural order, with the toubab chief, his second in command, the medicine man and other leaders in the front of the other toubabu. Biton would do a dance himself and sing for us all to hear.
He began with a question, which he made to sound like a song.
“Is the toubabu’s helper here? Please tell me that, my friends.” “No,”
someone sang back,
“the helper is not here.” “Look again, my friends, to be sure,”
he calledout. And when he was reassured that the helper was not present, Biton stepped up his dance and sang some more:
“This one, with the hairs just on his chin, is Second Chief. He operates the ship. He lives. And this second one, with the belly as big as a woman with child, he is Toubab Chief, and he dies. But first, we wait for Fanta’s baby.”
WE HAD BEEN ON BOARD for a full cycle of the moon. Homelanders were dying steadily, at a rate of one or two a day. The dead were shown no respect. The splash of a man or woman hitting the water horrified me more each time and insulted the spirits of the dead. It was worse, to my way of thinking, than killing them. I listened for the splash, even though I dreaded it, but the one thing that disturbed me even more was not hearing it at all. To me, silent entry suggested that the bodies were sinking into oblivion. At night, my dreams were haunted by images of people falling from the edge of Bayo, disappearing without warning and without sound, as if they had walked blindfolded over the edge of a cliff.
Toubabu sailors died too, on board. I saw some of them, sick and dying, on days when I followed the medicine man around. They had gums rotting and overgrown, spit full of green phlegm, black spots breaking out on their skin, and open sores that stank terribly. When a toubab leader died, he was thrown overboard with his clothes on. When a toubab sailor died, he was stripped of his clothing and tossed to the sharks that trailed us like water vultures. Sailors tossed all sorts of garbage overboard daily-pails of shit, split barrels disgorging rotten food, swollen rats-but it got so that every time I heard a splash, I feared the worst.
There were no children my age on board. There was no one to play with. Other than a few babies, it was just men and women. I was lucky not to be confined with the others in the hold, but too often there was nothing for me to do. Alone in the medicine man’s cabin, sometimesI would sleep to pass the time. Or I would amuse myself by throwing peanuts at the parrot, or teaching it words such as
the toubab will pay
in Fulfulde. And I staged conversations between my parents. I would have them argue, back and forth, about me.
She will sleep with the women, in the hold. No, she won’t, it’s better to leave her with the toubab because he’s harmless. Harmless? Is he harmless with the women, at night?
When that sort of conversation made my head pound, I would steer the subject toward home.
You spend too much time visiting women in other villages and we haven’t planted enough millet. The women complain every time you avoid going to the fields with them. I am not visiting women. I am catching babies, and I bring home chickens and pots and knives, and once I even brought a goat. I don’t care about your stupid women in the
Biton made us sing the naming game and dance so lustily that the toubabu would come closer to admire us. The toubabu assembled in their natural order, with the toubab chief, his second in command, the medicine man and other leaders in the front of the other toubabu. Biton would do a dance himself and sing for us all to hear.
He began with a question, which he made to sound like a song.
“Is the toubabu’s helper here? Please tell me that, my friends.” “No,”
someone sang back,
“the helper is not here.” “Look again, my friends, to be sure,”
he calledout. And when he was reassured that the helper was not present, Biton stepped up his dance and sang some more:
“This one, with the hairs just on his chin, is Second Chief. He operates the ship. He lives. And this second one, with the belly as big as a woman with child, he is Toubab Chief, and he dies. But first, we wait for Fanta’s baby.”
WE HAD BEEN ON BOARD for a full cycle of the moon. Homelanders were dying steadily, at a rate of one or two a day. The dead were shown no respect. The splash of a man or woman hitting the water horrified me more each time and insulted the spirits of the dead. It was worse, to my way of thinking, than killing them. I listened for the splash, even though I dreaded it, but the one thing that disturbed me even more was not hearing it at all. To me, silent entry suggested that the bodies were sinking into oblivion. At night, my dreams were haunted by images of people falling from the edge of Bayo, disappearing without warning and without sound, as if they had walked blindfolded over the edge of a cliff.
Toubabu sailors died too, on board. I saw some of them, sick and dying, on days when I followed the medicine man around. They had gums rotting and overgrown, spit full of green phlegm, black spots breaking out on their skin, and open sores that stank terribly. When a toubab leader died, he was thrown overboard with his clothes on. When a toubab sailor died, he was stripped of his clothing and tossed to the sharks that trailed us like water vultures. Sailors tossed all sorts of garbage overboard daily-pails of shit, split barrels disgorging rotten food, swollen rats-but it got so that every time I heard a splash, I feared the worst.
There were no children my age on board. There was no one to play with. Other than a few babies, it was just men and women. I was lucky not to be confined with the others in the hold, but too often there was nothing for me to do. Alone in the medicine man’s cabin, sometimesI would sleep to pass the time. Or I would amuse myself by throwing peanuts at the parrot, or teaching it words such as
the toubab will pay
in Fulfulde. And I staged conversations between my parents. I would have them argue, back and forth, about me.
She will sleep with the women, in the hold. No, she won’t, it’s better to leave her with the toubab because he’s harmless. Harmless? Is he harmless with the women, at night?
When that sort of conversation made my head pound, I would steer the subject toward home.
You spend too much time visiting women in other villages and we haven’t planted enough millet. The women complain every time you avoid going to the fields with them. I am not visiting women. I am catching babies, and I bring home chickens and pots and knives, and once I even brought a goat. I don’t care about your stupid women in the
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